Xo (Kathryn Dance 3)

"Now, we confirmed that the cigarette from last night at your motel is a Marlboro. We have ash from the site of the Sheri Towne attack--cigarette ash, I mean--but we don't have the equipment to analyze it proper to tell what brand it is or how long ago it was left."

It was then that Dennis Harutyun's assistant came to the door and handed him a sheaf of papers. "These're those emails you were waiting for, about Bobby Prescott. They finally came in."

The deputy read them over, laughed. Subdued but for him a significant outpouring of emotion.

He said to the officers, "One of the things I was looking into was another motive for killing Bobby Prescott, by somebody other than Edwin?"

"Right," Dance said.

"Well, I may've found one."

"Go ahead."

He said, "You ever hear about these guys, John, Paul, George and Ringo?"

Chapter 48

DANCE AND O'NEIL conducted the search themselves.

It felt good, being with him again, working with him. Some of this was simply the comfort of being with a person you were close to, whose subtle looks and smiles and gestures communicated perfectly, without the need for words.

But part of the pleasure was their combined skills as law enforcers. A Gestalt--the whole greater than the sum of the parts. Policing's a tough business and can't be done alone. The job can be a nightmare when you aren't connected with your partner--and that not only makes for a tough working day but it also means the bad guys are less likely to get caught.

Police investigation can be an art form, like ballet, a choreography of technique, purpose, and she felt this in near perfection with Michael O'Neil.

The scene where they were practicing their harmonies was Bobby Prescott's trailer and what had inspired the search here was the revelation by Harutyun about the Fab Four.

Dance believed she now knew what had been stolen the morning after the roadie had been murdered--by the person Tabatha Nysmith had seen in Bobby's trailer. And the object of this theft wasn't Kayleigh Towne memorabilia. Indeed, it had nothing to do with the singer at all or with the stalker--except to the extent that, yes, Edwin Sharp probably was a fall guy as he'd claimed all along.

"Well," she said, somewhat breathlessly, examining a binder from the shelves where she'd noted something missing several days ago, when she was here with P. K. Madigan.

O'Neil stepped closer and together they looked over a spiral notebook in which Bobby Prescott's father had jotted details about the recordings he'd helped engineer at Abbey Road Studios in London during the 1960s and '70s.

Dance recalled that Tabatha had mentioned Bobby's father's illustrious career.

It was a breathtaking list of talent f

rom the era: Cliff Richard, Connie Francis, the Scorpions, the Hollies, Pink Floyd and of course the Beatles, who recorded Yellow Submarine and Abbey Road there. Much of the man's scribbling was cryptic--notes about synthesizers and amplifier dynamics and acoustic baffles and instruments.

But the most relevant was a carbon copy of a letter to Bobby's father.

June 13, 1969

Bob Prescott:

Hey mate, thanks for the GREAT job, you're the best engineer, we mean it. Loved working with you. So, in appreciation for all those sleepless nights the tapes to those songs we did playing around after 'Abbey Road,' are yours, all the rights, everything. The list's below. Cheers!

"Wait," O'Neil said. "Are those ...?"

Dance said in a whisper, "I think they are. My God, I think they are." At the bottom of the letter were the titles of four songs. None of them was a known Beatles song.

She explained that the composing and recording of the songs on the Abbey Road album began in the spring of 1969. It was the group's last studio album. Let It Be was released a year later, though that song was finished by January of '69.

Dennis Harutyun--the "librarian of the FMCSO," as Madigan dubbed him--had indeed done some impressive research into the life of Bobby Prescott and his family to see if anyone other than Edwin might have a motive to kill him. The deputy had found some rumors, buried on the Internet, that his father might have had some outtakes of Beatles songs he'd helped engineer in London years ago.

But these weren't outtakes; they were complete songs, original and unreleased, never heard in public.

"And the Beatles just gave them away?" O'Neil asked.